Epa Criticized Over Ratings Of Toxic Sites Group Says 9 Dumps In State Should Be On Superfund List

March 27, 1985|by SUSAN MILLIGAN, States News Service

Nine of Pennsylvania's toxic waste sites are hazardous enough to be considered for government cleanup but they have been kept off the priority cleanup list because of bureaucratic holdups, according to a Washington-based environmental group.

Seven of those sites are in The Morning Call circulation area, including one in Lehigh County and six in Montgomery County.

The sites are among 50 nationwide that have been evaluated by the Environmental Protection Agency as highly toxic, Public Citizen said yesterday.

The Pennsylvania dumps Public Citizen said should be on the list include Reeser's Landfill in Upper Macungie Township, Lehigh County; six U.S. Naval Air Development sites in Montgomery County; Clements Landfill in Lebanon County and a site called Recticon Corporation. EPA and state Department of Environmental Resources spokesmen said they did not know the location of the Recticon site.

The numerical rankings EPA assigned to the sites would make them technically eligible for cleanup under Superfund, the federal plan to detoxify the country's worst waste sites. But for various bureaucratic or political reasons, Public Citizen said, the sites have not been scheduled for Superfund cleanup.

"EPA is preventing extremely dangerous sites from qualifying for cleanup," said Janet Hathaway, an attorney with the environmental group. "People living near these 50 toxic sites have a right to know that according to EPA's own ranking system, they are among the most dangerous sites in the country."

To qualify for cleanup with Superfund dollars, a toxic waste site must be on the "National Priorities List." The list is made up of sites the EPA has determined to be beyond a certain threshold of toxicity.

Pennsylvania currently has 39 hazardous dumps on the NPL. An additional 10 are being considered for the list.

Robin Woods, an EPA spokeswoman in Washington, said the agency could not comment on the individual sites because it was still studying the report. "In the meantime," she said, "We are confident that our hazardous ranking system which EPA uses to select sites for the cleanup list is targeting the most serious sites in the nation. We are in the process of cleaning up hundreds of sites."

A spokesman for the EPA's regional office in Philadelphia said he could not provide any immediate details on the individual sites.

Pennsylvania had the largest number of sites named by Public Citizen as eligible for the priorities list.

According to material the group received from EPA pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Pennsylvania sites have been kept from the list because of a "data gap." The "data gap" means that EPA doesn't have all the information it wants on the sites, Woods said.

The agency should include those sites for Superfund cleanup even if EPA doesn't have all the information it wants, Hathaway said, since the sites have been found by EPA's own ranking system to be bad enough already.

"Most sites are not fully explored when they are first included on the NPL," she said. "Incomplete data is the norm, not the exception, for newly listed sites."

Other dumps named by Public Citizen have been kept off at the request of the host state, the EPA papers said.

Hathaway said a state may want to keep a site off the list because of the cost, since states must pay 10 percent of the price of a Superfund cleanup. State officials may also want to keep secret the toxicity of a dump so that the image of the state is not tainted, she said.

"They don't want to look like another New Jersey," the home of the highest number of Superfund dumps, she said.

Hathaway said the group hopes to spur EPA to action on the sites by publicizing their whereabouts.

Superfund was created in 1980 to clean up the country's toxic waste dumps. The $1.4-billion fund is paid for by a tax on producers of certain chemicals.

Proposals to reauthorize Superfund - which expires in October -are pending in Congress.